Tuesday, April 24, 2018

This morning on my drive into work I was listening to Finding the Narrative, a Genesys podcast hosted by Tony Fanning and Chris Holmes. They started talking about combat and it made me realize that I like Savage Worlds more than any other system on the market to date. I do like Fantasy Flight Games' game and it does some stuff really well but Savage Worlds does it better.

Then I thought, what is it about Genesys that I like? Well for starters, its magic system is top notch. I think it performs better than most other systems. The magic user can adjust how powerful her spell is on a case by case basis. It allows free form sculpting of the spells on the fly and is only limited by the spellcasters imagination. Savage Worlds can't quite do this but it does come closer than anyone else with trappings.

Genesys' use of talents makes more sense to me than just increasing your skills. The use of talents allows players to have a bit more narrative structure to their character while also including boons to skill rolls, strain, or soak value. The tree by which talents are selected is designed to force the players to make difficult choices and also makes sure the character is balanced (i.e. not overpowered). Savage Worlds is very similar to this in the fact that some Edges have prerequisites. Players cannot simply take Improved Counterattack without first taking Counterattack. Then Counterattack in itself has requirements of its own. One last thing that I really like about Genesys is its use of Motivation. Motivation is a tool for both the player and the GM. It helps the player to better define the character by describing when and how they learned the skills that they have. It also provides the GM with ideas to incorporate the character's background into the story. I don't know how many times I've asked players to write a short background on their character and only get a few people to actually do it. Savage Worlds sort of accomplishes the same thing through the use of Hindrances but too many players only see these as a way to generate bennies. It is meant to help mold the character to your concept. Flawed characters are always more fun than perfect ones.

Now onto some of the things I dislike about Genesys. Combat
actions, this irks the hell out of me and the deciding factor of why Savage
Worlds is better. Much like D&D, in Genesys you only get one combat action.
I remember the first time I saw Savage Worlds played by others. I saw someone
perform multiple attack actions and move around. This was an epiphany to me.
This is what I was missing from D&D. I was growing tired of the no you
can't do that because you only have one action mentality. I wanted to be able
to jump onto a table, kick an Orc in the face, swing from the chandelier, and
tackle another Orc. Not gonna happen in Genesys or D&D.

Let's talk about Cool and Vigilance used for initiative. This is
stupid. Why are there two different skills for performing the same task? I
understand they're trying to differentiate between someone being surprised and
someone who is ready to engage in combat. It does speed up the surprise check
process but it doesn’t make sense. Why do I need to invest points into two
different skills that only has one purpose, combat initiative? Just have the
players roll Perception for surprise, if they fail they act the next round.
Then have all successful players roll initiative. The players who are surprised
take the last available initiative slots.

Abstract initiative turn order is not something I enjoy all that
much either. I don't see a whole lot wrong with it but I see it as encouraging
meta gaming. I'm not saying meta gaming is bad. I'd just like to see a little
less of it during combat. Savage Worlds and Castles & Crusades gets this
part right. Initiative is determined every round simulating the fact that
combat is more fluid and you don't act at the same time every turn.

Before I forget, I really don't like how characteristics in
Genesys are pretty much stuck after character creation. Or at least they should
allow for a more accessible way to increase them after creation. Currently the
only way to increase them is after picking up a tier 5 talent and that is
pretty dang tough to accomplish. A tier 5 talent will cost 175 experience
points minimum. In game terms that means you could increase one characteristic
by 1 every 9 sessions assuming you don't spend it on skills.

Savage World is not perfect by any means either but it handles
everything I've wanted in a game fairly well. Just to name a few things I'm not
keen on are the different uses of Investigation and Streetwise to accomplish
the same thing. They both perform the same function but are narratively defined
differently. I've also heard that the new version will breakout Performance
from Persuasion which again are serving the same function with different
narrative descriptions. They will also combine Climbing, Swimming, and Throwing
into a new Athletics skill. They really need to keep Throwing separate from
Athletics. Throwing is a combat skill that needs to be on its own.

Basically what I'm getting at is that no game system is perfect
and Genesys is not, nor will ever be a Savage Worlds Killer. I'm looking at you
Jamie. Anybody who's familiar with the Nerds-International Google Plus
community will know that SWK is just a term we use to joke around with about
one system being better than the other but we all know that Savage Worlds just
does some things better than others. It should go without saying that we put
ICRPG into the same category of ribbing each other.

Even though I'm not a huge fan of ICRPG, I cannot deny the fact that it has changed how lots
of people play table top RPG's in general. It has made a huge impact on the
game industry as we know it. At least once a week I'll see someone on social
media talk about how they don't play it but it has opened their eyes or showed
them a new way to look at something. For that, I say thank you Hankerin Ferinale.

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Almost a week ago during my
Tuesday night game at the FLGS, I randomly decided my character was afraid of
heights. Of course, this was decided just as we entered a room with a giant
gaping hole in the floor. There was a rickety board spanning across this void
and along the walls were enough of a ledge to try to traverse around the hole.
One side looked as if it was damaged and had black soot staining it so one of
our party attempted to go along the side that appeared relatively undamaged.

As luck would have it, the section he was crossing gave way whilst
near the middle of the pitfall. While the entire wall started to collapse
inward, he successfully managed to leap off the debris and miraculously land on
the single board in the middle of the room. While all of this was happening, my
mage continued to bite his nails as he observed the rest of the party cross the
void. When it came to me to cross the board, I gained enough courage to step
out onto the board and suddenly froze up. Terrified with fear Zoltar wouldn't
budge one step further. His friend came back to carry him across but was immediately
stricken by a scrawny mage who was freaking out.

The party had to regroup and come up with a new plan. Our party is
blessed with two individuals capable of illusory magic and they came up with
the idea of projecting an image of a 5 foot wide platform for which Zoltar
could cross without fear. They would leap frog so to speak. One would project a
5 by 5 image then the other would follow up in the same manner. All the while,
there is a black line on the floor for the mage to follow.

I justified Zoltar crossing the expanse because he believed the
magic to be real and a 5 foot wide path would have been wide enough so that if
he fell, he wouldn't have any fear of falling in to the pit. This scenario took
about 15 to 20 minutes to play out but this morning on my drive into work I
couldn't help but wonder what the DM was thinking at that moment and I started
to wonder if I would have handled it any differently. The DM was my friend
Stuart Helm and I think he handled it the same way I would have.

I knew he was antsy to get the game moving along when the players
initially entered the room because we were taking too long by talking about how
to get to the other side or if we even needed to, or wanted to for that matter.
We had the option of going back outside the building and coming back in through
another entrance. During this conversation is when I noticed Stuart trying to
hurry us along and I came up with the fear of heights. I'm sure some of you
would say that's just a dick move but I was curious how everyone at the table
would handle this situation.

I have to say I was pleasantly surprised because the other players
went right along with entertaining my characters flaws and Stuart took a step
back to let this play out. I think some less experienced DM's would have tried
to say some BS like its DM fiat and we're moving on. I think I would have done
the same thing as Stuart and I probably would have forced the other players to
figure it out if they didn't want to go along with the fear of heights dilemma.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this as well. What would you
have done in this situation? At the time I almost felt as if I was derailing
Stuart's game progression but now I feel more like it was an interesting and
fun problem that you don't see come up in games very often, especially D&D.
Usually we're focused on the heroic and extraordinary acts we can accomplish in
a game of fantasy. Why don't we see more irrational human fears in our games?

Stuart, if you're reading this, what do you think or what were you
thinking when this happened?